get to the table, stay at the table...

Topic: Transgender individual's rights to use either bathroom (men's or women's) they desire.

Buckle up, people. But it's probably not going to be what you think.

I spend a lot of time on the road, and I spend that time in a lot of different parts of the country. One thing that's happening in retail (shops, restaurants, etc) points to a trend I hope doesn't come to office parks.

Here's the trend... Businesses - faced with legal pressure or simply wanting to accommodate Transgender individuals - are increasing changing single stall bathrooms (one for men, one for women) to gender neutral status. That "reclassification" means that either men or women can use either bathroom that is available. That solves the transgender issue without the economic burden of retrofitting a third bathroom to exist alongside men's and women's facilities.

I understand that I'm probably going to get emails from what I've wrote already, because I'm not an expert in Transgender issues. Send your emails, however, because I do want to learn more and understand to a greater degree.

But I am an expert in some things. Allow me to school you on why reclassifying a men's and women's bathroom to gender neutral-status doesn't work:

When businesses make existing single-stall bathrooms gender neutral, females (anyone identifying as female) lose. And this trend is alive and well in some areas of the country. It's a natural, completely understandable reaction to the capital cost of building new facilities.

I can only hope this trend can be avoided as transgender issues become more accepted and we work through the same challenges in the workplace.

Rights for everyone - Ok and check. Let's evolve together.

Rights for dudes to use bathrooms on a frequent basis that females will have to use afterwords - we're better than that America.

By now, you've likely heard about the Google engineer who got fired for writing a diversity manifesto. If not, here's what happened:

"Google employees are up in arms after a senior engineer at the company penned an anti-diversity manifesto that has spread through the company like wildfire.

The manifesto criticizes company initiatives aimed at increasing gender and racial diversity and argues that Google should instead focus on "ideological diversity," according to a report by Vice's Motherboard, which first reported the news late on Friday. The 10-page treatise also claims that biological difference between men and women are responsible for the underrepresentation of women in the tech industry.

As you might expect, that type of manifesto was greeted with much criticism. So much so, it created the following events this week:

Google fired the engineer.

There was a backlash related to the decision to fire the engineer.

The Google CEO sent an email telling everyone it was all going to be OK.

The email didn't tamper down the storm.

Google's CEO understood the storm was so bad inside his company that he came back from a vacation in Africa with his family to be present for an all-hands meeting.

As I've said before in this space, freedom of speech is alive and well in the American workplace. The problem is that employees believe that freedom of speech means they can't be fired. As Google demonstrated in firing the engineer, a company's code of conduct and professional conduct policies generally give them the right to move people out if they are communicating ideas that aren't embraced by the majority of the company.

And there, my friends, is the rub.

Google fired the engineer because they thought the employee base dramatically would support that move. As it turns out, a lot of people at Google thought his macro point was right - female engineers are hard to find because there's some genetic wiring in females that make careers in engineering less attractive to them.

So the sh*t show builds after the firing, and the CEO is coming back from halfway across the globe - because he knows he's ultimately responsible for calming this thing down.

There's some macro points in the manifesto that many of you, if not most, would agree with.

But the guy is an engineer. Of course, he takes it way too far. That's what engineers who know no shades of gray do.

The most interesting thing I've seen about this case is polling on whether the engineer should have been fired across the major tech companies in America. Blind, an anonymous corporate chat app, asked its users if they thought Google should have fired Damore, over 4,000 from different companies weighed in.

Perhaps most pertinently, 441 Google employees responded. Of them, more than half – 56% to be precise– said they didn't think it was right for the company to fire Damore.

Here's how the poll worked out across the major tech companies - enable images or click through if you don't see the chart below.

Notable is that at Uber, 64% of employees who participated in the survey thought Google shouldn't have fired Damore. Employees at Apple and LinkedIn were nearly evenly split in the poll but leaned slightly toward approving Google's decision. Meanwhile, 65% of respondents from Lyft were good with the way it went down. That kind of follows what we know at Uber and Lyft related to how they view the world.

The chart feels like most presidential elections, and tells you that even in the tech bubble, what seems obvious is not obvious.

Which is why the CEO of Google had to cut his vacation short to come back and try and hose down the situation.

Good times - and a reminder that employee sentiment isn't always (hell, ever) as simple as we think it is.

Who here has every been the subject of a deposition? Who here has ever acted like jerk during a deposition towards an arrogant attorney from the other side?

Great! It's not just me. Just one more thing we have in common...

A young HR capitalist was once the subject of a deposition featuring an arrogant, condescending attorney on the other side. The young HR capitalist reacted in such a negative way that the attorney on his side had to call for a break and counsel the young HRC to stop being a d##k to the other side - even though they had it coming.

Favorite plays from the deposition playbook of mine the young HRC included -

--only answering questions in yes/no format when the question clearly called for more...

--answering questions framed in a negative tense (so you don't believe that manager...) "yes". Because in my mind I'm saying yes to your statement, not going with the informal flow. This is a formal event, right?

--not giving enough details on process because I can't clearly define it as it works a variety of ways - although there is a certain way it's supposed to work, but you didn't ask me that, did you?

No wonder that attorney called for a break during the young capitalist's deposition.

That's why the notes below from a deposition of Google co-founder Larry Page are so fun. Page was recently deposed by attorneys representing Uber in a lawsuit filed by Google related to the allegation of stolen IP from self-driving car company Waymo. Take a look at the notes below from the deposition Business Insider and see my notes in brackets and all caps:

----------------------------------------

The transcript is full of examples of Page responding tersely to questioning, such as this exchange:

Uber: Google invested in Uber, correct?

Page: Yes.

Uber: Do you recall when?

Page: My answer is yes. (PRO MOVE - JUST ANSWERING THE QUESTION YES/NO. DID THEY WANT MORE? SURE, BUT YOU ANSWERED THE QUESTION. SUCKS TO BE THEM)

Page said he wasn't familiar with how Google stores source code:

Uber: Do you know the way that Google typically retains things, like source-code materials and design specifications, and things like that?

Uber: You're not familiar with the details of the trade secrets that are at issue here?

Page: Yes. (ANSWERING A QUESTION CALLING FOR A SIMPLE NO WITH A YES. IT'S NOT LARRY'S PROBLEMS THAT THEY PHRASED IT IN A WAY THAT HE COULD HAVE FUN WITH. "THAT'S CORRECT" IS BORING. "YES" IS MUCH MORE FUN)

Uber: You don't know, for example, what the trade secrets are that Uber allegedly misappropriated?

Page: No, I do not.

Uber: Whenever it was that you learned — let me make sure I'm clear on this. You don't remember, sitting here today, when you learned or how you learned that Uber may have misappropriated Google or Waymo trade secrets. Is that right?

Page: That's correct. (MISSED OPPORTUNITY - HE COULD HAVE SAID YES)

Uber: And you don't remember how you learned?

Page: I mean, that's correct, yes.

Uber: Did you authorize the filing of the lawsuit against Uber?

Page: I mean, I'm certainly aware of it, yeah, and then allowed it to proceed, I suppose. I'm not sure I authorized it. I'm not sure that's the right word.

Uber: Well, could a lawsuit of this magnitude be filed without your consent and approval?

Page: I mean, I guess I'm not — I'm the CEO of the company — parent company of Waymo, and Waymo operates more or less as an independent company.

Uber: Is Waymo authorized to file a lawsuit like this on its own without even consulting you?

Page: I mean, I don't know all the details of that. (I'M FLYING AT 100,000 FEET PEOPLE. YOU REALIZE I COULD BUY YOUR FIRM TODAY, RIGHT? I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT GOOGLE BUYING IT, I MEAN ME PERSONALLY)

---------------------------------

Pros moves all the way around. Holla if you've ever been a barrier to a successful deposition - as the actual subject of that deposition.

"Ready for some mansplaining? Good, because I’m a guy, and damn, it seems like companies are having a hard time avoiding gender-related harassment. So I’m here to help.

I’m referring to s*x**l harassment, but I have to call it gender-related harassment because a lot of you have email filters at the corporate level that won’t allow content in with the word s*x**l. You know, because you can’t be trusted. As a result, you end up missing good stuff like this and Marvin Gaye videos your friends might send you. Sucks to be you. But I digress."

A Man’s DIY Guide to Rid Your Company of Gender-Related Harassment

If there's one thing HR Pros hate, it's taking on unnecessary risk. After all, you're the one that thinks about legal things, and more often than not, you're the one left to answer for what happened when the lawyers come in. Could that by why there's so much CYA going on in our profession?

One of the things I've never thought about in my years writing as an HR pro is how lawyers on the other side (i.e., the ones that are suing your company) approach a deposition. That's why this post by John Hollon over at Fistful of Talent is a must share. John found a piece of video gold from an employee-side attorney that gives the playbook on his general game plan to take down HR pros in depositions.

That's right - the complete game plan on how he's going to circle around and trap you, formatted neatly in 5 things all layers should do when taking a deposition from HR.

Get the Goods. From Bohm: “Instead of focusing on the bad things your client allegedly did, always start your deposition with the human resource professional, to have them point out the good things that your client has done. Have them go through the performance evaluations were they talk about your client doing a good job. Have them explain that putting an employee as “meets” or “exceeds expectations” is an indication that the employee is doing a good job. … Make the human resource professional agree with you on the record about the good things that your client did to contribute to the workplace.”

Paper Policies. From Bohm: “Almost every workplace has policies but they don’t follow them. This is a gold mine for HR depositions. … Have the human resource manager confirm that these rules existed; and then have the human resources manager confirm that the rules were not followed. Then point out in a kung fu fashion that these rules could have been followed, but somebody made a choice not to follow the employer’s workplace rules.”

Core Values. From Bohm: “The human resource professional more than anybody else in the business should know what that business’ core values are. Core values are really important to juries and HR should know them. If they don’t know what the core values are, what an amazing testimony you get when you ask the person in charge of 1000 employees, “What are the company’s core values?” and they look back at you say, “I don’t know.”

“It wasn’t me!” Syndrome. From Bohm: “Take advantage of the “It wasn’t me!” syndrome that seems to plague every human resource manager I have ever met. And it’s because it usually is true! The human resources department is trying to keep these managers from doing very stupid and malicious things. And when the case happens where they couldn’t stop management from doing that stupid thing, the human resources professional is always ready to tell you under oath, “It wasn’t me!” You want to take advantage of that finger pointing.”

Prevention. From Bohm: “This is the kryptonite of every human resource witness I have ever deposed. It’s on the subject of prevention. This is your ultimate kung fu power. Talk about what the human resources manager could have done, should have done, or did not do, to prevent the illegal conduct from happening in the first place.”

The bottom line to this other than it feels sleazy to everyone on our side? You can't protect yourself from all of this, but awareness of what the game plan is by you can raise your awareness and probably save you from looking like a total moron - because you're not.

Can sleazy lawyers still take what you say out of context? Of course - but when you're forced to give details that make you or the company look bad, being aware of what the other side is after can ensure you get context into the record of the deposition.

And getting context into the record is something that might save your reputation - or job.

In case you missed it, the State of Illinois Attorney General is in the news for some premium PR/saber-rattling, centered around the fact that job boards like CareerBuilder and Indeed are trying to exclude older workers from applying for jobs they don't want.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan's office alleged in letters sent March 1 that older job seekers are deterred from using resume tools and creating profiles on the nation's largest job search sites—CareerBuilder, Indeed and Monster—because of their age, potentially violating the Illinois Human Rights Act and the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA).

Three other job sites, Beyond.com, Ladders Inc. and Vault, were also sent letters requesting information about the companies' practices.

Ok. I'm interested. I'm at the older age range of GenX, so this is me some day in the future.

In one example provided by the attorney general, 1980 was the earliest possible choice for users' education or previous employment start dates, effectively barring anyone older than 50 from using the tool. Other sites used dates ranging from 1950 to 1970 as cutoffs.

How dare they. Tell me more.

Madigan's office asked in its letter to CareerBuilder why users cannot choose a high school graduation date prior to 1955, saying that the cutoff excludes those who are 81 or older from full use of the site's services.

"CareerBuilder is committed to helping workers of all ages find job opportunities and has fixed this unfortunate oversight," said Michael Erwin, director of global corporate communications and social media for the Chicago-based job search site.

Uh, OK. CareerBuilder's not automatically configured to let those 81 years or older apply for a job in the buzzsaw of corporate America? I get that the tools need to be configured in an agnostic way from an age perspective, but 81? Kind of feels like CareerBuilder had it mostly right. Now thinking this is some grandstanding the AG is doing so she can stump to the older crowd at Piccadilly when she makes the run for Governor.

"Remember when those evildoers at CB were trying to take away your right to apply for a job you had no interest in doing? I was there for you. How's the red jello today? Is the early bird special still on? I might grab a plate after I get done telling you how the Internet is evil."

Austin, Texas-based Indeed's resume builder drop-down menu went back to 1956. "This did not prevent anyone from manually noting an earlier date on a resume, but we did extend that menu to 1900 after hearing of the concern in the letter," said senior public relations manager Alex Ortolani.

"Indeed's mission is to help people get jobs, and we strongly believe that age should not be a factor in evaluation of employment," he said.

No shit. This could have been a phone call to the job boards to tell them to have the stoner developer in charge of drop down menus to dial up 1900, just in case that nimble great/great/great/great/great grandma wanted that call center job. But no, we get a PR release to take a shot at Job Boards, because, you know - the AG really gets the intersection of job boards and age discrimination.

No mention in the SHRM article about which job board only allows those creating candidate profiles to go back to 1970. Maybe that's someone that needs a AG whack across the knees.

But 81 years old? How about you just call CareerBuilder to ask that they expand the drop down menu and be a partner to business?

Of course, if the AG really understood discrimination, she'd be asking job boards to eliminate options that needlessly force people to show just how freaking old they are - like drop down graduation date menus.

Instead? We want the option to show if your parents voted for Teddy Roosevelt on 1900.

At the end of the day, employees have to trust any HR pro enough to come forward and share bad stuff with said HR pro. What type of bad stuff? What type of bad stuff do your employees have?

Hate. Addiction. Family Dysfunction. Ambition. Concerns about others. Just to name a few.

All these things and more are filed under topics that employees would love to talk to someone about. Due to the role of HR, a good HR pro is a likely target for an employee to vent to. But before they make the decision to confide in you, they have to evaluate whether you can be trusted.

"But I do recall a conversation I had one day with an employee who was experiencing some issues at work. When I offered to listen and provide support, she said “Unfortunately, I can’t talk to you about this. It’s not that I don’t trust you personally. It’s the chair that you sit in. You have the authority to fire me. And I can’t risk that.”

After she left my office, I thought about what she’d said. I wanted to be offended. But I kinda understood where she was coming from. While it was frustrating that she wouldn’t allow me to try to help out just because of my position in the organization, I also knew that sometimes it was part of my role to be involved in making decisions about her career. So sharing a weakness or performance problem with someone who has that type of influence could be perceived as a risk."

Go read Jennifer's post. Then think about the kind of HR pro you are. I'd tell you that when it comes to employees considering whether they want to confide in you on a deep level, there are 3 types of HR pros:

No way, no how. You've got a reputation for sharing information about others with the wrong people. You talk too much, and this is most commonly manifested by you talking about other employees to... you guessed it.... their peers - other rank and file employees. Which causes them to wonder what you would do if they shared something deep about themselves that they're struggling with.

You haven't ####ed it up yet. They look at you as an HR pro and see someone they shouldn't distrust, but you haven't earned your stripes yet as someone that can go on lockdown and be fully trusted. At some point, someone's going to test that, seeking to trust you and ask you for advice. When that day comes, you'll have to listen, offer advice, put the info in a lockbox (shoutout to Al Gore, inventor of the internet) and not share with anyone. You know, be trustworthy.

The Rock. Employees have trusted you with some bad stuff about themselves in the past. You listened, offered advice and then most importantly, locked it down. You didn't talk to other employees and just as importantly, didn't share the info with their boss, other senior team members in your unit, etc. As a result, employees talk. You've got a reputation as someone that can be trusted, even though the employees who share that opinion never talk about what they shared with you.

HR pros earn their reps with results - either negative or positive - when employees choose to trust them. Like the rest of the human race, some HR pros are great building and maintaining trust, some aren't.

My advice for any HR pro is to develop a quick script to share with any employee that approaches you and tells you they're about to go deep. My favorite is something related to confidentiality that suggests, "if you're asking for confidentiality, I can tell you I can deliver that with the exception of things that are legal issues or would negatively impact our business."

My experience is that the best HR pros usually have quite a bit of stuff on lockdown. Do employees trust you? That's a fair question any HR pro should ask themselves.

OK, my over 40 friends, it's call out time. Remember that I'm over 40, so I send this message out of love, not hate.

Some of you are gainfully employed, but tired - I get that. You see an article that suggests you shouldn't have to grind as hard as you do, and you love it and automatically want to share it.

I'm here to tell you that I understand. But I'm also here to tell you that you're acting like a complete fool. It's subtle, but it's fool behavior that's a sucker's play by any stretch of the imagination.

My background on this starts with the title of the article, then what the article said. The sketchy title was as follows - People Over 40 Should Only Work 3 Days a Weekfrom some site called EatWorkGlow (some of the content appears below):

"Recent research by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research found that, whilst working up to 30 hours a week is good for cognitive function in the over 40s, any more than that causes performance to deteriorate.

In fact, those who worked 55 hours a week or more showed worse cognitive impairment than those who were retired or unemployed and didn’t work at all.

The study looked at 3500 women and 3000 men aged 40 and over, and made them complete cognitive function tests whilst their performance at work was monitored.

As most people have to go on working after 40, or even return to work after a break to have a family or for other personal reasons, taking care of your health, maximizing your down time and taking restful holidays becomes more important. Professor McKenzie says that, “Working full time – over 40 hours a week – is still better than no work in terms of maintaining cognitive function, but it is not maximizing the potential effects of work.”

I looked at the entire article a couple of times. Nowhere in the body of the text could I find a statement from the researchers that suggested that People Over 40 Should Only Work 3 Days a Week. That was a clickbait title put together by someone that wanted you to read the article and wanted to maximize social sharing.

You loved it. I know you did because about 15 people in my network shared the article. You ate it up like a kid eats an oreo when he missed lunch. You also took the bait and shared it with the world.

And that's where the problem starts. Here's what you did:

You tried to celebrate the fact that experts believe you're at your best when you work less. You're over 40. You're tired of grinding because let's face it, this whole thing we do is exhausting. You're also gainfully employed if you shared it, because no over 40 person out of work would dare share this title.

You hurt the over 40 crowd that's looking for work when you shared this. No one over 40 AND out of work would share this. Because they already feel like people pass on them for jobs they're qualified for because of age bias. What's that bias based on? There are many angles, but one is definitely the fact that older workers just can't go as long or as hard as their younger comrades.

You hurt a future version of yourself (likely one with less energy than you have today) that will be over 40 or over 50 and looking for a job. Let's face it, you'll have to plan on the fact that you're going to be impacted by a layoff or something similar in the future and be in the job market. When you share a clickbait title that has a research element like People Over 40 Should Only Work 3 Days a Week, you're just making things harder on the version of you that's going to need a break 10 years from now.

Would you love to work 3 days a week now? Yes, but you're gainfully employed.

When you shared that article, you made all the people over 40 and out of work throw up in their mouths. Most of them are concerned about basic things - like providing for their families.

Your comrades over 40 don't give a #### about the number of hours it takes. They just want a great to solid job. You hurt them and the future version of yourself when you share things that imply older workers can't give the same level of effort/grind/hustle as someone under 40.

It's bad when you're on your way to harassment being mentioned in your Annual Report, which the Fox News Parent company will probably end up doing. Why would they have to do that? Because of three things:

--The speed at which they settled a harassment claim that just surfaced a month ago...

--The size of the settlement - 20M

--The fact that tens, if not hundreds of similar cases are gong to flow against Fox News in the next 12 months, which will look like a write down to a large class action lawsuit.

Why do we know this is true? Fox News settled with former Fox and Friends anchor/host Gretchen Carlson in response to a lawsuit filed just a month ago. The setup from the LA Times:

"Fox News parent 21st Century Fox moved decisively Tuesday to end the sexual harassment scandal that has roiled the media company, issuing an extraordinary apology to former anchor Gretchen Carlson and agreeing to pay $20 million to settle her lawsuit against her former boss, Roger Ailes.

“We sincerely regret and apologize for the fact that Gretchen was not treated with the respect and dignity that she and all of our colleagues deserve,” the company’s statement said.

The unusually candid expression of regret over Ailes’ alleged actions demonstrates how much Fox wants the controversy to go away. Coming in the midst of a presidential election, the scandal had raised questions about the future leadership of a network that has long dominated cable TV news ratings."

Translation - the guy was a freak show and if we don't go to 20M, the probability of 60M is too high to deal with. Do the deal.

But the dirty little detail behind this settlement is that it's far from over. There are multiple other suits pending and let's face it, when you apologize for leader conduct and a lack of respect and dignity, you're not really going to have an appetite to fight any of those claims.

And there will be more claims. Most, if not all of them, will be legit. Fox News will pay.

It's a form of closure for something that was institutionalized. They'll pay without fighting, because things where so ####ed up. There will be a time, probably around the one year mark, when that will change and Fox will start fighting claims.

For now, they'll do a little due process on each claim and then write a check in accordance with the indignity and the size of the person's career.

It's what you do when you look up and find that your leader was a freak. That has a funny way of rolling downhill to the rest of the company.

It's every manager's worst nightmare. You did the right thing with some problematic employees, but then you got investigated/sued.

Getting sued is a scarlet letter. Without question, it's much better not to get sued, but if you do the right thing and get sued as a result, sometimes you LOOK LIKE A BETTER LEADER THAN OTHERS AROUND YOU.

Such is the case with Missouri Softball Coach Ehren Earleywine, who's had a lot of success at Mizzou but was recently under investigation. Here's a basic rundown of what transpired with the help of reporting from the Kansas City Star:

1. Earleywine had been under investigation by the athletic department, and later the main campus through MU’s Office for Civil Rights & Title IX, for more than four months.

5. Missouri has concluded its Title IX investigation into Earleywine with no finding that he violated federal non-discrimination statutes.

Earleywine, a Jefferson City, Mo., native, is 453-154 in 10 seasons as Missouri’s coach. The Tigers have appeared in a NCAA regional every season of Earleywine’s tenure, advancing to a super regional eight times and appearing in three consecutive Women’s College World Series from 2009-11.

Here's what Earleywine said when the complaints first became public:

“There’s a couple of kids on the team that probably have things, exchanges between myself and them or different scenarios, that they would have liked to see handled differently,” Earleywine said. “I’m tough on kids. I make them accountable and there’s discipline in our program. I’m a throwback. If that’s demeaning, maybe, but it’s not about them, the person, it’s about their performance as a player.”

“I’m trying to build resiliency and toughness in people, and hoping that they’ll be better people when they graduate from here because they’ve been through some tough stuff,” Earleywine said. “Have I used some inappropriate language? Yes. Is that grounds for firing a coach? I think if you set that precedent, there won’t be a coach left in America. Outside of that, I’m not ashamed of anything that I’ve done.”

Here's what managers of people should learn from this:

1. There's an art to dealing with employees who won't get with the program. While you should treat everyone with respect, low performers and disrupters have to be addressed.

2. Tough decisions are yours and yours alone. Don't expect anyone to help you. This includes addressing low performance and attitude as the whole team sees it. You've got to figure out the best way to deal with it. Your goals should be to get performance out of the team as a whole, develop individual talent and treat everyone with respect. But you have to be tough when circumstances and specific individuals call for it.

3. If you do what's outlined above - get performance out of the team as a whole, develop individual talent and treat everyone with respect- people will rally behind you if something bad happens - like a lawsuit, investigation, etc.

Of course, your employees can't attend a meeting under protest and make it public in a way that matters, right?

But your ability to deal with employees who won't get with the program is one of the most important things you can do. And the reality is this - if you manage teams for more than a decade (especially if you manage a department with more than 10 people and multiple managers) and you haven't been the subject of a lawsuit or investigation of what I'll call nuisance value - you probably haven't been managing for results hard enough.

You play to win the game. Treat all with respect, but don't accept disruption or refusal to be part of a team. Good HR pros will have your back - as well as some advice about ways you can avoid the investigation/lawsuit next time.